Expanded processing of agricultural products in rural areas has been widely pursued as a strategy for rural economic development. By adding value to farm products before they leave the area, new processing plants can create new employment opportunities and generate economic spinoffs in rural...

The corn grain ethanol industry experienced rapid growth from 2005- 07. U.S. financial markets obliged and supplied credit at reasonable cost and terms which facilitated this expansion. Now, the biofuel industry is being challenged to nearly triple production under recently passed federal...

Contents: The enduring legacy of Farm Foundation, by David P. Ernstes; Passing the torch: The generational transition for nonadvocacy public education and outreach, by Otto C. Doering III; Collaboration and institutional innovation, by Mark A. Edelman; The alternatives-consequences approach, by...

This monograph intends to be a handbook or guide regarding efficiency analysis tools, for those interested in either reading –and properly understanding- specialised papers on the topic, or in carrying out efficiency analysis studies. In points 3 to 6 the more usual efficiency measures in the...

This paper examines nature and extent of farmers’ indebtedness in India using unit record data from NSSO 59th round, and provided a comparative picture of major Indian states. It shows using data from rice cultivating farmers that productivity of small farmers is not only higher than the...

The Japanese government initiated a series of regulatory reforms in the mid-1990s. The Japanese urban gas industry consists of various sized private and non-private firms. Numerous previous studies find that deregulation leads to productivity improvements. We extend the literature by analyzing...

This paper tries to investigate efficiency of electricity use of 30 administration regions and productivity change of electricity in China for the period 2003-2008. We use the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method to measure the efficiency of electricity use and productivity change of...

This study analyses, through cross-section estimation methods, the influence of spatial effects in productivity (product per worker), at economic sectors level of the NUTs III of mainland Portugal, from 1995 to 1999 and from 2000 to 2005 (taking in count the data availability and the Portuguese...

Adaptation to climate change has become an important policy question in recent years. Agriculture is the economic activity most sensitive to climate change. We evaluate the dynamic effects of productivity change and individual efforts to adapt to climate change. Adaptation actions in agriculture...